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SUNY CORTLAND GAINS NEW DEPARTMENT IN SPORT MANAGEMENT (SUNY Cortland Public Relations Office - January 26, 2006) - SUNY Cortland has become the first SUNY campus with a Sport Management Department, which is now the third largest major at the College. Sport management majors number 370 this semester, a sharp increase from the 40 students enrolled when the program first became a major in 1999. SUNY Cortland decided to shift sport management into its own academic department because of its growing popularity and its curricular focus — the business of sports. “This is not one of those cases of ‘If we build it, they will come,’ ” said Ted Fay, who was the only sport management professor at SUNY Cortland when he arrived in 1999. “We’re at the opposite situation of capping and controlling the numbers we have.” Besides the undergraduate degree, the College was notified this week that it had received approval from the New York State Department of Education to become the only SUNY campus to offer a master’s degree in sport management. The master’s program, which will be offered next fall, will “fill a huge need not being met by any state institution in New York,” said David Snyder, the department’s interim chair. SUNY Cortland Provost Elizabeth Davis-Russell said it made more sense to create a Sport Management Department than to have the program remain under the Department of Exercise Science, which focuses on how and why the human body responds to physical activity. With the influx of students, the Sport Management Department could double its faculty to eight professors by next fall. One new faculty member was hired this semester to coordinate the graduate program and the department plans to hire two or three more professors by the fall, depending on the state budget, Davis-Russell said. The changes in the SUNY Cortland sport management program reflect the overall growth of the sports industry, both nationally and internationally. The College’s program has attracted faculty who have already worked in the industry, with major league teams, Olympic organizations, marketing firms and media outlets. “Sport is not a fad,” said Fay, who spent 20 years working for skiing, ice hockey, Paralympic and Olympic organizations. “It is growing into a major industry in Western economies but there’s great expansion in terms of the developing world. It’s a long way from being saturated.” At SUNY Cortland, sport management is a hands-on program that requires students to spend one semester at an internship for credit. After six months of graduating, more than 70 percent of the students in the program have landed a job in the field. “It comes down to how aggressive are you going to be,” said Lisa Scherer, an assistant sport management professor who formerly worked for Jim Kelly Enterprises, a company run by the former Buffalo Bills quarterback. “For you to make it in this industry, you’ve got to have something on your resume.” As head of the department’s internship program, Scherer has placed students in jobs with international sports organizations, major and minor league teams, college athletic departments and media companies. This semester, two SUNY Cortland students worked for the International Paralympics Committee at its headquarters in Bonn, Germany, and helped oversee the Olympic games for disabled athletes in February in Italy. Doug Forster, a 2004 SUNY Cortland graduate who majored in sport management, was hired as the marketing coordinator for ESPN ABC Sports after completing an internship at the company in New York City. While the company provided internships for 100 students, Forster was one of about a dozen interns who were hired full-time at the sports conglomerate. “I was able to apply what I actually learned in the classroom at Cortland here on the job,” Forster said. “It’s definitely had a positive effect.” Students in the program learn how to use sports technology in one of three labs equipped with computers and digital video. Two companies, Pinnacle Systems Team Sports (now called XOS) and Dartfish USA, donated $6.6 million in hardware and software to the College’s Sport Media and Technology Learning Center in Studio West. “What sets us apart from other sport management programs in the nation is that we have a unique focus in sport-specific information technology,” said Daniel DePerno, an assistant professor who directs the SMTLC. "Our students receive hands-on training and certifications in hardware and software applications they will be using in the sport industry." Sport management was created as a concentration within SUNY Cortland’s physical education department in 1985. After it became a major in 1999, it moved to the Exercise Science and Sports Studies Department as a program and its popularity started to mushroom. Today, the department receives between 700 and 800 applications annually for between 70 and 80 slots. The most popular major at SUNY Cortland is physical education, with 762 students enrolled, followed by childhood education, with 590 majors, and sport management. |
